Friday, 10 January 2014

Since
this coalition came to power our banks have paid out over €45bn in bonds, more
than a third of that total unsecured. Who benefited? Have a read of this, for
starters.

Our
national debt is now over €200bn, has increased year-on-year at a frightening
rate, up by over €10bn in 2013 alone and still rising.

There’s
a line from a Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale I've used a few times – All the
people standing by stood and cheered and cried, ‘Oh, how splendid are the Emperor's new clothes’.

Some,
however, are not cheering. If you're not inclined to applaud the fact that the
NTMA went back to the markets again this week and borrowed another €3.75bn, you
might like to read the take of economist David
McWilliams.

If
you can take your medicine a little harder, a little meatier, if you're suspicious
of the government’s claims of reducing unemployment, you might like to go to Constantin
Gurdgiev’s blog and read some additional not-so-well-advertised facts.
Constantin does mention emigration in this blog but couldn't input the actual
numbers – imagine the picture it would show if he could.

This
government repeatedly claims that the measures they have taken are progressive
in nature, that they’ve hit hardest those who can most afford it – read this by
economist Michael
Taft and know in your heads what you already know in your hearts. Know also
that those particular individual policies were NOT dictated by the Troika but
rather were the very deliberate choices of this government.

If
you're wondering what the hell we have to celebrate on ‘exiting’ this so-called
‘bailout’, read what this outside observer, Ambrose
Evan-Pritchard, has to say.

ANOTHER YEAR OLDER,
NOTHING LEARNED

We’re
told our export figures are improving but even Michael Noonan admits this isn’t
because of an increase in the export of goods – it’s an increase in services.
And what are those? Well, think IFSC, think multinationals, then think of who
and what got the world into this mess in the first place. The greedy and
noxious element of the financial ‘services’ sector with the toxic trade in
their toxic bonds, the multinationals using every rule in the book (most of
which they helped to write in the last four deregulating decades) to avoid paying
their fair share of taxes, thus increasingly skewing the capital/labour
contribution figures.

Already
indentured slaves to our European 'partners', Michael Noonan, Enda Kenny, Eamon Gilmore
and Brendan Howlin want to see us put even more of our eggs in those two
baskets, become even deeper in debt to the markets, even deeper in thrall to
the multinationals.

What
of investment in our own indigenous industries, what of encouraging and funding
the growth of small and medium enterprise?

But
no, instead this country is being slowly crushed. We’ve poured €70bn into our banks,
most of that under coercion from our European 'partners' but do we now have a
functioning banking system? Yes, if you're a bondholder; no if you're Irish and
looking to start or maintain a new small business, no if you're looking to buy
a new house and you don’t have 100% cast-iron security.

A TALE OF TWO
NATIONS

In
February 2011 we threw out the government that helped us into this hole of hell
and elected the Fine Gael/Labour coalition, expecting they would take our fight
to Europe. Instead they have taken Europe’s fight to us. In recognition of
their success, at the end 2012 Enda Kenny was voted European Of The Year by a
German magazine; a year later and Michael Noonan is voted Finance Minister Of
The Year by European bankers (be certain though that this won’t be the end of
their respective rewards from Europe).

Now,
as we enter 2014, we have two Irelands, as put so eloquently and so poignantly
in this letter
to the Irish Times some weeks ago, the false front being presented to the
world, and the real Ireland being slowly stripped of services, of working
rights and conditions, of its own natural wealth and resources, an Ireland where
people are being slowly crushed under the burden of increasing regressive universal
taxes and charges.

NEW YEAR, OLD
RESOLUTION

‘Hiding in plain sight’ is a well-known
expression, a well-known tactic; in this case the truth is not hidden, it’s
there for all to see. Some of us have known that truth for a long time. On March
2nd, only six weeks away now, in Ballyhea we’ll be starting into our
fourth year of weekly protest, our fourth year of campaigning against this
injustice. To mark the occasion we will hold a conference at which we invite
all those mentioned above to attend.

Our
hope is that we will wake people up to what’s been happening to us; our hope
also is that our media will stand back and take a full, objective look at what
exactly has happened in Ireland since the launch of the euro, the damage that
has been caused in this country since the launch of what was a fatally flawed
currency.

In
the meantime we resolve to continue our campaign. The austerity measures aside,
whether we were Switzerland or Swaziland what was done to Ireland was wrong and
we will not just let it pass. We are currently in the process of building a cross-party
cross-society coalition that will join with us in taking this fight back to Europe.

We have drawn up our own proposals
for the lifting of the entire burden but right now our focus is on the Promissory
Notes and the remaining €28.1bn in bonds that sit in the Central Bank awaiting
sale to the markets. Those bonds represent a large portion of the most odious
element of the banking debt; at this point, before they are sold into the
markets, they are also the easiest element to destroy. The EU/ECB found the
means to allow the issue of those Promissory Notes, they must now equally find
the means of their destruction.